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Number of women in prison rapidly rising

The number of women in Australia's prisons has surged in the past 10 years, and jumped more than eight per cent in the past 12 months according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

In an alarming trend, the numbers of women locked up for criminal offences grew more than 20 times faster than the increase in men in prison last year, according to the annual 'Prisoners in Australia' report.

The ABS said the number of women behind bars increased by 8.4 per cent over the past 12 months, and by 48 per cent since 2002.

This compares to a 0.4 per cent increase in the number of male prisoners over the past 12 months, and a 29 per cent rise in the past decade.

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The most common offences committed by women were illicit drug offences (17 per cent) and acts intended to cause injury (14 per cent).

Men were most commonly jailed for acts intended to cause injury and sexual assault.

As of June 30, there were 29,383 people behind bars in Australia - an increase of one per cent since 2011 and up 31 per cent since 2002.

Fiona Dowsley, the ABS director of the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics, said 2,201 females were in Australian adult corrective services custody on 30 June 2012.

"Today's statistics show that the number of female prisoners has increased at a rate 21 times higher than the number of male prisoners since 2011," Ms Dowsley said.

"And females now make up seven per cent of Australia's total prisoner population."

The 'Prisoners in Australia' publication tabulates people in all Australian adult corrective services, and includes statistics on the characteristics of prisoners, their sentence length and the most serious offence.

The Northern Territory has the highest per capita of population rate of imprisonment - with 826 per 100,000 adults incarcerated. Western Australia was a distant second with 267 per 100,000 people.

The national average is 168 prisoners per 100,000 adults in prison, an 11 per cent increase over the past 10 years, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprising just over a quarter of the total prisoner population.